Gaming

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue file for those who can read it.

Reasons

Vine stalkers spread any damage they take between their health and their mana. Losing mana from big damage spikes is horrible on most gods as you need mana to cast your "save me" abilities. Some of the gods don't care about mana at all but they also give you no incentive to train skills that will raise your mana in the first place.

And then there's Makhleb. Their abilities cost health instead of mana (and their costs take a percentage of your maximum health so frail Vine stalkers are on discount!) and they love high Invocations skill that will bring your mana to respectable levels. To add to this, Vine stalkers have a naturally fast health regeneration so they can spam Makhleb's abilities more often.

How it went

So, after brainstorming this build, I wanted to win with it. And, after 3 unsuccessful attempts, I did exactly that.

This build has two central points: Unleash Destruction and Antimagic Bite.

Unleash Destruction is Makhleb's ability that costs a fraction of your health and... nothing more! It's completely spammable - as long as you can survive spamming it of course. And oh just how spammable it is on Vine stalkers! Why fight enemies one by one when you can destroy them with your burning/freezing/draining/corroding hatred? Get your ~~enemies~~ victims in a hallway and shoot your hellish lasers or whatever!

As it is a full range penetrating beam, it can manage summoners and the shining eyes very well too. So, while it's usefulness caps at Shoals and Swamp, it will still be useful all the way to Zot.

Antimagic Bite is a Vine stalker's special. You hit an orc wizard with a swift but weak dagger and they lose half their health and their voice can't cast the spells anymore for some reason. This is the reason Vine stalkers rule. Naturally, you want to maximize bite's damage potential by triggering it more - thus the need for a fast weapon. I started this run with an assumption that I will go with short swords and rapiers but the game had its own plans...

Demon whip is no joke. While it's not as fast as a quick blade it has a higher base damage and it scales with strength which is exactly what we need. Also no "20 skill to reach mindelay" nonsense lmao.

And this is a big deal as Vine stalker's aptitudes aren't great... take a look at our main skills:

• Fighting (-1) and Evocations (-1)
• Armour and Dodging (-2), Shields (-1)
• Invocations (0)
• Maces&Flails or Short blades (-1)

Sure, it's not Mummy-level bad but still quite meh. What do you mean "you have 10 Dodging in Crystal armor"?? That's.... that was very important....

So anyway, some other stuff this build has or should get online:

• Infernal Servant: Makhleb's second ability and a glorious "meh whatever" from me. Demonic friends are nice early on but they don't scale well into late-game. Wow, a green death?? Well thank you it's poison will surely help deal with liches and orbs of fire! I HAVE MAX INVO MAKH YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE!!! ...If you see a mark that replaces Infernal Servant don't hesitate you won't miss it.

• Marks: while we're at it, let's talk marks. Makhleb gives you a choice of three marks once you reach their final rank. Marks can never be rerolled so you're stuck with what you're given for the entire run. Here's my thoughts on the four marks I've gained on my attempts:

  • Mark of Atrocity: the obvious. Makes Unleash Destruction extremely strong... and extremely costy. The moment you get it, you must stop spamming it. It proved to be too hard to manage for me so I splattered because of it.
  • Mark of Execution: as if your bite wasn't enough. You were already great at melee but now you're a beast. The mark has no downsides too so you can pick it if you're afraid of others' costs.
  • Mark of Annihilation: no more demonic friends. And now you have Orb of Destruction with explosions! Pretty nice I'd say. Highly situational as it doesn't do well with hallways but it can deal with crowds just fine.
  • Mark of Celebrant: what enables the stupid (me) to win. The closest you get to a panic button on Makhleb. If it activates you are in trouble and must figure out how to survive. I won with this one.

• Lupine talisman: this build rests on two tenets: spend health and hit really fast. Being a werewolf makes you regain your health quickly and stack up a fixed bonus to each of your attacks. C'mon 50 damage per whip's swing, you don't wanna? You aren't even risking much with your Will already being so high. Footwear is overrated anyway...

I still hate guardian spirit btw :)

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

I forgot just how painful it is to play a pew-pew caster in Crawl so the game decided to remind me. With endless supply of mana (thanks to Sif Muna) you’d think it should be easy. Ha! Funny.

Mana management is the worst part of playing a pew-pew caster for sure but it’s not the only problem. All late-game spells are noisy as hell meaning you will constantly bring in attention from the floor. Your failure rates will never reach 0% on spells that matter. 1% chance to miscast? Three times in a row, please.

Resistances become a pain in the ass near the end. Don’t have Orb of Destruction or Bombard by Depths? Prepare to suffer :)
I’m not even gonna mention Zot - the Orbs are absurd!

I mean I think for the last years every time I opened Steam Charts to see popular games there it is, Rust.

I wonder why I never have seen anyone talk about this game on Reddit or Lemmy. I've seen posts related to Warframe, Marvel Rivals, CS, Arc Raiders, and many others get in Popular tab of Reddit, but never anything related to Rust.

I've updated my long-running blog detailing every single video game studio, big and small, using generative AI. Today, I've added entries for Lutris' AI coding, Nvidia's Yassification filter, Unity's AI game generator, Valve testing AI tools, and a couple of indie studios.

I've also added more information about Koei-Tecmo using an AI chat engine in-game, Warhorse firing translators to use AI translation in the future, Krafton signing with a weapons manufacturer to make "physical AI" weapons, and Xbox's new AI-loving CEO.

As always, these entries and additions were fully researched and cited. Though I admit my annoyance (and frankly appalled attitude) is really on display in these new entries.

Happy April fools :)

Original link (no longer functional): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vQKrQbyEjo

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/43475467

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

It was a normal frog archer run with my fearsome amphibian and their battlemage ancestor shooting and conjuring their way through the dungeon. Between my huge damage output (thanks Harm!) and my constantly Idealized ancestor, the run was extremely easy. Thus, I entered Zot:5.

After clearing the rest of the floor, I switched my Harm amulet to another one with -Tele to prevent teleport traps and got to the Hall of Zot. Unexpectedly, orb guardians weren't alone at the entrance - a draconian gang settled there too. That confused me and my ancestor died. Which is fine, it's not like its the first time (battlemage is squishy!). I just need to reset the encounter by going to the staircase.

So, I hopped and, as I was merely two tiles from the stairs and enemies were pretty far away, I just walked to the stairs. And then...

55054 | Zot:5 | HP: 1/204 [Orb Guardian (54)]

OUCH

I didn't notice there was a moth of wrath among the enemies, and the closest orb guardian to me was zerked. Total misplay but still...

Think, now! What can I do to guarantee survival? I can't hop as it's on cooldown, can't blink as I'm under -tele, can't use Transference as my ancestor is dead. Throwing net, mephitic cloud, wand of paralysis all have a chance to fail. Invisibility and Leda's Liquefaction won't prevent their attacks.

My gaze lifted upon scrolls of summoning that were chosen over scrolls of butterflies by the RNG this run. "If only I had these..." I thought when I noticed a scroll of butterflies right there in my inventory. Unused since the very beginning of the game when I decided to play as hunter instead of hexslinger. The only scroll of butterflies I could have for this entire run.

A gentle wind pushed the orb guardian away from me as colorful insects filled the space between us. Thanking Xom for this beautiful coincidence, I went upstair and healed up to full health, and then eventually cleared the rest of the last floor and escaped with the Orb.

🦋❤️

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue for those who can read it

My usual experience with meld-all shapeshifters in midgame is as follows: find the dragon-coil talisman in Lair, upgrade to it by S branches and effortlessly destroy them, enter Vaults and almost die to the first group of monsters, rush shapeshifting for the storm talisman in panic and forever abandon the scaly monster I was never meant to be.

NOT THIS TIME!

I started this run with a clear goal: experience the draconian’s dragon form glory. That means, no storm form, no sphinx form, definitely no statue form.

The plan started to feel grim from the get go: protean talisman transformed into medusa. And… I mean, medusa isn’t necessarily bad. It’s good when you are a gladiator with a nice trident! But when you are an unarmed shapeshifter who rushed Shapeshifting skill to 6, it SUCKS! All other forms can handle most threats effortlessly with no UC skill. Medusa can’t, you must rush some UC or switch to weapons…

Then I found the spider talisman. I never played with it before, it just tends to appear in Elf 3’s end vault or some other absurdly late place. And, from my first experience, I must say it’s good! You are squishy as hell of course but you get so much EV from it (much more than wellspring!) that it’s not that big of a deal. Rampage is nice, hop is basically a free blink and you ensnare your foes on hit too. I wouldn’t do Spider Nest with it of course but Shoals and Swamp seem doable to me.

Trog helped with survivability a bit too. Berserk was nice early on, and then Trog’s Hand and occasional Brother in Arm can help in bad situations (though it helped me the most during the orb run). The only problem I had with them was…

Trog gifts you a weapon!

Read the room, man!

Now, finally, dragon form. It is a glass cannon kind of talisman. Like scarab, like spider. It gives a lot of health, some AC and resistances but… in the end it’s still extremely squishy. Yet I feel like the form is at its worst at lower shapeshifting. As I went from 17 (the minimal for it) to 20 and beyond, I felt like low health syndrome wasn’t as prevalent. Not to say I turned into a tank but I think my struggle was over after early Vaults floors.

Well, I am a draconian so the dragon form is stronger than on other species. Bonus AC, faster recharging breath attack, tailslap. But, at least on one species, dragon form can handle Zot without much struggle. Even with these orbs…

Orbs of Entropy. It was my first time dealing with them. They corrode, they drain, they doom. I actually got a bane of paradox thanks to one of them. The orb run was fun… OoE is the scariest variety of orbs for me.

About the orb run. Usually it’s easy, with some orb guardians and other pests. Maybe a panlord or an executioner will appear but you’ll escape easily. Not this time. Panlords and pan-level demons at nearly every Zot and Depths floor. An orb guardian with Manifold Assault (thanks OoE…). Doesn’t help that this seed was particularly low on ?blink and !haste. Got the win through sheer Will… thanks Trog’s Hand for the Will btw :P

I recently bought Balatro and discovered that the PC game can be converted into a Android APK through tools like balatro-mobile-maker and now I was wondering if this is the case for more games. Do you know any other games were something like this is possible?

“Nerd baby rage” sums up a lot of Lemmy